NC Supreme Court rules in favor of North Beltway landowners

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Photo credit: Thinkstock

NC Supreme Court rules in favor of North Beltway landowners

Photo credit: Thinkstock

The North Carolina Supreme Court upheld a North Carolina Appeals Court ruling that the state must pay a group of landowners with property located in the designated path of the Northern Beltway in Forsyth County.

Work on that portion of the beltway could be years away, but those property owners were restricted from improving, developing, or subdividing their property for an unlimited period of time.

The justices sided with the Appeals Court ruling that said the North Carolina Department of Transportation had “exercised its power of eminent domain when it filed the transportation corridor maps” for the Beltway project.

11 landowners were involved in the lawsuit, arguing the state had depressed the value of their land and limited their options for it to such an extent they’d taken the property without payment.

At the time of the appeals court ruling, attorney Matthew Bryant told the Winston-Salem Journal, “It confirms what we have been saying from the beginning — that the state was condemning these people and needed to buy them.”